


Lavender Fish

by nemyy



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood and Injury, Depression, Eventual Dan Howell/Phil Lester, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Recovery, References to Depression, Slow Burn, Slow Burn Dan Howell/Phil Lester, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26630407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nemyy/pseuds/nemyy
Summary: “Maybe he had jumped, and this was the okay. The world where it felt like someone, just one person, cared. A nice flash of what could have been, his wildest fantasy, tantalisingly just out of reach before his eyes. No matter what direction he stepped, it felt like either way everything would stop, stop anyway. But at least this way some mysterious, deliciously fabricated stranger could grab his hand and ghost him away somewhere happier, far from the cold of the street, and the screams, and the blood, and his crack in the pavement.“Recovery is a little easier with someone else, someone who understands. It was uncomfortable, repulsive at times, but Daniel's glad it's Phil who was the one to stop him. It all felt a little less wretched with him.
Relationships: Dan Howell & Phil Lester, Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	Lavender Fish

**Author's Note:**

> this was really nice to write. i actually started writing it about 2 years ago but i found it too difficult to continue, honestly. i've gotten a lot more healthy now - i'm not perfect, but i'm getting there - and i think i'm finally ready to write this. i hope you like it :] please leave feedback if you do enjoy it! it helps give me motivation to keep on writing this, hahah. take it easy, and enjoy.

He stood, staring down at the peaceful street below. Well, not soon.  
There was little else left. Everything was shit, and painful, and raging, and hurting, and it never got better, and it never got worse, because he knew it physically couldn’t. He told no one. No one could or would know. ‘Selfish.’ He could hear it already. ‘He just always seemed so happy.’ He really didn’t. ‘It’s just such a shame.’ What a fucking platitude. He wanted it to shut up, all of it to just shut up and stop. He had never been one for hurting himself, not really. Too terrified, too cowardly. That made him hate it more. Himself, really. He didn’t think it would ever be an option, not properly. He’d thought about it. Of course he’d thought about it. When the opportunity presented itself, he couldn’t help but think of him just picking up that knife next to him and slashing his throat open right there and then, thick, disgusting blood flying everywhere as he blacked out from the pain. Swerving just a little bit left of his lane and screeching off of the road into a bramble thicket to die. Standing on the edge of his apartment’s rooftop he had scarcely been able to carve the energy out to move to. He’d used up the last of it he had residing somewhere left in him, the child in him that wouldn’t let go. It had to now. Just a little happy step forward. It might all just go wonderfully black and blank and final and that would be it. The sweetest it, the last one he would get to know. No more that cut him up in little triangles every day until he was minced inside to out. That gouged out his acids and forced him to swallow them again. Just take a step, Daniel. Maybe it would be okay on the other side; it would finally silence. And so it would all be okay.

“So, I live across the way, and I saw you going up the stairs and I got worried because I hadn’t seen you for a few weeks, and now you’re on the roof and if I’m right in thinking what you’re about to do please stop.”

Daniel froze, turning ever so cautiously around to face- to face this man, tears glistening across his eyes, and jaw just so slightly agape as he stared down at him.

“M- my name is Phil,” the man stuttered, terrified as Daniel was hopeless. He took a few tentative steps forward, his hand drifting up to meet the man in front of him. Agony embodied. Double- no, triple bags matched only by hollowed out eyes, an aggressively red patch just below his left cheek, looking like the bizarre result of some form of stress, a mouth strung flat and empty, and a slouch begging, screaming for someone to care where he didn’t. “And I would really like if you stepped down from there. If you just come down then- then maybe we can talk this out, yeah?” He cautioned, extending his hand further and shifting another step forward.

Daniel stared at this man, Phil, entirely lost, brain still trying to process what in fuck’s name was genuinely happening. Maybe he had jumped, and this was the okay. The world where it felt like someone, just one person, cared. A nice flash of what could have been, his wildest fantasy, tantalisingly just out of reach before his eyes. No matter what direction he stepped, it felt like either way everything would stop, stop anyway. But at least this way some mysterious, deliciously fabricated stranger could grab his hand and ghost him away somewhere happier, far from the cold of the street, and the screams, and the blood, and his crack in the pavement.

He reached out, wrangling the man’s hand that was now slowly easing him down, and slipped off the ledge, small sparks of understanding turning in him. As he took in the warmth of this man’s hand, gentle, desperate, and landed his feet on the floor, it was all suddenly real, and all suddenly happening, and he was going to throw up, or sob, or both at once, in front of who was essentially a stranger, a stranger’s hand which he was now crushing in sheer terror. Out of the corner of Daniel’s eyes he could see Phil’s breath pick up, his mouth opening for a split second before deciding against whatever he might have been about to say. Now that he was standing - properly standing, not a halfway between standing and being somewhere else altogether - it suddenly felt like there was some sort of immense pressure on Daniel’s back. In his throat, in fact, and in his ears, and in his lungs and feeding down into his intestines and throughout his muscles and-

“Slow down. Just breathe, breathe with me.” What Daniel had not in fact noticed, is that he had since dropped to the floor, and that his breath had picked up considerably more than Phil’s had by now, and that Phil’s hand was on his stomach. It felt foreign, now that he had started noticing that. He wanted him off. He wanted it off. Off.

“Don’t touch me.” He mumbled through his haze, losing his claw of a grip on Phil’s hand, and the hand that had been resting on his stomach. “That’s okay, that’s okay. But at least look at me and just breathe, okay?” The man took an exaggerated breath, and huffed out with more emphasis than Daniel thought he had ever had in his entire life combined. Daniel, after deliberating about nothing for a few seconds, eventually looked up towards Phil, watching the gentle, purposeful motions of his chest move up and down as he attempted to comfort the other man. 

It all felt sort of cruel, in a way. Like he was being mocked. Like his life wasn’t even in his own hands, like the only reason this man was here was to trap Daniel in the clutches of life. It was fucking pathetic. He was pathetic. Because he knew this man would leave in a few minutes and lock him in the immovable horror of the after of whatever the fuck this was. He didn’t really want to think about what it was, what any of it meant, or could be, was, would have been. But, he supposed, at least there was someone. That’s more than he could say for most other hours of the day. The isolation was voluntary and the presence of another person repulsed him a little, but, well, it was something different from the monotone of his other days. The man with him seemed kind, at least. Kind enough to be huffing breaths out for Daniel as if he was Daniel’s very own respirator. 

“Good.”  
“I’m not a child.” He was.  
“Sorry.”

They sat in awkward silence, Daniel’s breaths hiccuping out of him as his brain slowed. He felt grotesque, to be frank. He wished he looked half as romantic as the television told him he might. Snot was collapsing out of his nose and coalescing with his tears, forming some gelatinous mixture that pooled on his hands as he kept trying to wipe it away. He tried to flick it off for a good few seconds before eventually settling on wiping it on the concrete of the floor. He was fundamentally disgusting. That little action felt enough to break him and he keened like he was throwing out the last of his soul in that sound. He collapsed forwards in a heap, balling up his hands in his hair as he screwed his eyes and stared at the little shapes his eyelids produced for him. Legs tucked in and dribble forming at the side of his mouth too. Cute. How fucking cute.

There was a tiny warmth on the small of his back and he shivered, his hands clawing at his hair tighter. “I’m so sorry,” the stranger whispered, hand rubbing Daniel’s back tentatively. He felt the man’s hand grab onto one of his, coaxing Daniel’s fingers out of his scalp. He let his hands flop pathetically to the sides of his head, as if in prayer. The man kept a hold of his left hand. It was a little nice. Only a little. He didn’t exactly hold the hand back, moreso just let his hand lifelessly exist in this other man’s.

“What’s your name?” The man murmured. Phil, that was his name.  
He hesitated a lick before answering, “Daniel.”  
“That’s a nice name.”

Daniel turned slightly to look up at this man - Phil. He could just about sense the extent to which his own eyes looked like that of a kicked kitten. Wide and empty. Phil squeezed Daniel’s hand softly, a small crooked smile dancing on his lips. The gesture itself didn’t entirely feel like it made much of a difference but the way this man stared at Daniel felt like a warm cup of mint tea, soothing with notes that somehow pierced you. It was nice, Daniel thought.

“Do you like it?”  
Daniel blinked rapidly.  
“The tea,” Phil motioned to the cup in Daniel’s hand.  
“Yeah. Thanks.”  
It was a nice place, in here. Warm walls that breathed so slight on the eyes and an array of plants mingling with the softness of their breaths. It eased the pressure eating at his chest a little. At least Phil could decorate. 

“I’m- I don’t want to ask you about it if- if you don’t want to say anything, you know?” Phil mumbled slowly, endearingly doing his best to string his words together meaningfully as if talking another language. “Thanks. I don’t.” Daniel replied, taking another gulp of the tea and letting it run its course down his throat.

“That’s okay. I don’t- I don’t need… You don’t need to tell me anything. So please don’t if that’s what you need right now.”  
“I… know.” Daniel mused. He did know, he knew that. But the permission was nice, in a strange sort of way. He swallowed hard and met Phil’s gaze for a few moments before it all became too overwhelming and he looked back down at his tea. There was such a needless amount of care in the man’s eyes that it felt awkward, directed at Daniel. It was nice, but mostly unnerving. No one needed to care this much. He sort of wished the man had just dumped him back in Daniel’s own apartment so he could sit silently in the dark and wonder when he next might try. And then maybe they could avoid each other’s gaze in the corridors. Instead he was avoiding it in Phil’s own home. He wasn’t sure if it was worse, but it certainly felt like it. He closed his eyes, sighing deeply. It would be nice if they stayed shut - he was tired, exhausted even. That was one reason anyway.

“Let’s get you to bed, yeah?” Phil shook Daniel awake from wherever he was drifting to, the sudden Northern twinges in Phil’s accent a gentle surprise. “‘Right. I can sleep here,” Daniel muttered. Maybe he could wait until he heard Phil snoring in the room over and leave back to his own place. “No, no. You take my bed, I’ll really be fine here. I do it all the time anyway, sometimes I can’t be bothered to move from the sofa and I just fall asleep. Or, well, it just happens sometimes.”

Panic flared in Daniel a little, but he suppressed it as much as he could in front of this other man. He was taking too much from this Phil person. “No, I- please, I’ll be fine.”  
“No you won’t. Take my bed.” Phil said firmly, standing up from the sofa, dodging past the coffee table awkwardly and opening the door to his room. Daniel didn’t really have much choice. He placed his tea down in front of him and pushed himself up, stumbling over to Phil. “Thanks,” Daniel whispered, Phil nodding in reply.

As he collapsed onto Phil’s bed, before passing out, a small humoured smile crept onto Daniel’s face without him really noticing - Phil shopped at the same section of Ikea for bed covers.

“Night, Daniel.”


End file.
